A bit of background...

So, we started with some of the early pictures but I think that we need to explain how it all started. Chris and I ( Noel) have been married for almost 20 years( gosh...writing that makes me feel REALLY old!). He is 40. I am 38. We have four kids. Lath is 18,he went to college early and will be getting his associates degree next month. Hunter is 17, he has been homeschooled for the last two years and is graduating this May. Hunter is our go too, he builds, repairs and takes care of animals for us. Hannah is 14, she has been homeschooled for the last two years and is finishing 9th grade. Abi is 10, she is our "true North" so to speak. She is our special needs child who has had some serious health issues in her life that has caused us to rethink and rebalance things around us. I have always been a stay at home mom with the theory that when the youngest went to school I would go back to work...well Abi changed that. So, I am home with her, why not the rest?
Thirteen years ago we bought a fixer-upper. A beautiful Victorian ( or so we thought from the onset), with more than a few things that needed fixed. After years of waiting until the time was right and the kids were old enough to tear into it while living in it, we found out we were having Abi. So things that got started got put on hold until she was old enough and well enough for us to dive back into it. Money was tight so we found new ways to redo the house but still make it new.

We sanded the whole house to keep the origanal woodwork and found windows and doors at a building material auction, The trim Chris made himself. The colors of the house came from 5 gallon buckets of mistinted paint because it was less than half the price of picking the same colors and having them mix them.

Chris came up with the curved ceiling. The shower unit came from my parents, the cabinets were on clearance, the sink came from an auction.

This kitchen came off of craigslist with all the appliances( $1200). The slate countertop was leftover from a project my parents did.

The flooring was on clearance and we bought it on a weekend when you got 20% off your entire purchase...so 800 sq feet cost us a couple hundred dollars.

We refinished the exsisting hardwood floors. The wood for the trim Chris bought at an auction and then made himself.

Chris came up with the box beam ceiling idea and I just think it is cool. He made the trim for it too.

 Now, that house is complete and we are ready to try our hand at what we have been thinking about the whole time, being self sufficient. Having only one income makes you think outside the box a bit. Well, Chris thinks outside the box more than most. His plan was to build the whole house for less than $30,000. That has changed a bit now, my mom and brother( who is disabled) will be moving in with us so we have made the house bigger. Now he is thinking more along the lines of less than $50,000 for a house with around 3000 square foot. The plan is to build the house in two grain bins( more on that in later posts) with an area inbetween and an area behind them. We will have radiant heat in concrete floors with a wood boiler. We also plan on having a wood stove in the middle of the house for heat. Some sort of solar or wind generation for some of our power. We have already owned the property since 2010 and it is paid for in full. We have planted a huge garden and have chickens, pigs and cows ( again I will go more into all that too). We started to fix up the trailer the first year we owned the property so that we would have somewhere to stay while we worked on it, after we sell our exsisting house. While we worked on the trailer we would stay in our fifth wheel camper. The trailer is not that great but bigger than a fifth wheel. It is 14x60 with two bedrooms and one bath. We put windows and doors in it from auctions and garage sales. We reused leftover material from the house remodel. The bathroom had to be redone and we got a shower unit for it for $10 on clearance because it was missing the hardware. That is when I called the manufacturer and they sent me the missing hardware for free. The bedrooms were recarpeted with remnants and the living room is carpet squares out of an office building that were going to be thrown away. The kitchen flooring is hardwood that was leftover from a friends remodel project and they were going to throw it away anyway. We did have to redo all of the plumbing in the trailer due to busted pipes from no heat. We spent a grand total of $500 on everything in the redo. ( but that doesn't count in against the building of the house ) We are moving a bit slow in the building process because we are trying to still sell our house. It has been on the market for 10 months with only one offer so the major building won't start until that expense is gone. We don't want to have too much debt so it has been slow going but we are hopeful the house will sell soon and our plans will be in full swing. We have accumulated much of what we need to start with and I will get to all of that soon! ~ Noel